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[Dorrin]

Discussing the ending of this book, get out of here if you haven't read it. Don't ruin it for yourself!









I recently finished reading Bloom Meridian and I know I've seen this listed many times as being read by members of GAF so I'm curious about your reactions and theories on what happened at the end.

Looking around on the net and even watching some online presentations from Yale etc I've basically seen a handful of theories.

1) The judge kills and/or rapes the kid.
2) The judge rapes and kills the little missing organ grinder girl while the kid watches or participates. He may kill the kid as well.
3) The kid himself is actually evil and was a child molester/murderer all along.

I actually find #3 the most interesting. Basically throughout the book kids go missing here and there. The judge is the obvious culprit here but what if it was the kid? For a good part of the middle of the book we get a POV that isn't specifically the kids but of the company and while that happens kids go missing. When we rejoin the kid's POV most of the company is dead and he is fighting for his life against the judge.

Eventually he is free of the judge and he wanders. He picks up a bible he can't read and carries it around, maybe as cover or it helps him ward off his feelings? At the end of the book he runs into the judge at a lawless outpost full of bad types. The judge and the kid converse for a time during which the dancing bear is killed and the organ grinder girl runs off and a search is started for her.

The kid then picks up a dwarf prostitute but seems unable to perform, he then goes outside to the jakes and 'the judge meets him while naked and gathers him up to himself'. The next time we see the jakes there is an unknown man standing outside relieving himself. As two other men approach the jakes he tells them that he wouldn't go in there if he was them. They ask him if anyone is in there, his response is only that he wouldn't go in there. One of the men decides to open the door and exclaims 'Good God Almighty' and turns around to walk back up the walkway. Keep in mind this town is a really rough place so to get that kind of reaction whatever was going on in there isn't good.

So does anyone else think it is possible that the kid killed the little girl, 'embraced by the judge' meaning the kid fully embraced his inner evil he was denying all along?

 

[Bobby Roberts]

That's an interesting reading of the text, and McCarthy's writing is so biblical that interpreting things as mostly symbolic absolutely fits.

Personally, I think it's literal - the Judge was waiting in the stall, and did some sort of horrible thing to the kid, and then left the remains in there.

I'm not sure that the Kid was a child killer, though. He doesn't care about killing things, definitely, but he does appear to have some sort of compunction about murder that the Judge absolutely does not.

 

[Jibbajabbawockky]

Hmmm... that's an interesting take on it. I always kind of went with the straightforward interpretation that the Judge killed/raped/ otherwise makes a mess of the Kid. Such a creepy ending to the book but probably one of my all time favorite books. Just the way McCarthy writes can be so damn fun to read.

 

[Joe Shlabotnik]

It's pretty straightforward, as the above replies suggest. McCarthy isn't that plotty.

 

[C4Lukins]

I have not read it yet, and I am not reading responses in the thread because I plan to. But I will just guess that it ended with the worst possible outcome for all characters involved in the story.

 

[blainethemono]

Whatever happened, it was something undescribably fucked up. Even after all the other incredibly brutal violence depicted in the book (bush of dead babies, scouts hung from their heels over fire so their brains get cooked inside their skulls, etc.) that last bit of violence just gets a "Good god almighty" instead of being fully explained like everything else

I never considered any other interpretation besides the kid getting murdered by the judge though.

 

[Goody]

Whatever happened, it was something undescribably fucked up. Even after all the other incredibly brutal violence depicted in the book (bush of dead babies, scouts hung from their heels over fire so their brains get cooked inside their skulls, etc.) that last bit of violence just gets a "Good god almighty" instead of being fully explained like everything else

I never considered any other interpretation besides the kid getting murdered by the judge though.

This is pretty succinct. There's no textual evidence to support those other theories mentioned in the OP. Not only this, but no other ending carries the same dramatic weight.

 

[Screaming Meat]

Whatever happened, it was something undescribably fucked up. Even after all the other incredibly brutal violence depicted in the book (bush of dead babies, scouts hung from their heels over fire so their brains get cooked inside their skulls, etc.) that last bit of violence just gets a "Good god almighty" instead of being fully explained like everything else

I never considered any other interpretation besides the kid getting murdered by the judge though.

Long time since I've read it but this was how I took it.

I recall a scene earlier where the Judge, standing naked and armed with a small cannon, has two children with him as men burst in to kill him. Do I remember that right? If so, I would say that puts paid to the theory that the Kid was behind the other children's disappearance.

 

[Violet_0]

gotta read this book now

 

[Screaming Meat]

gotta read this book now

Kinda spoiled it for yourself...

 

[Kallor]

The man gives up and finally joins the judge.

 

[Violet_0]

Kinda spoiled it for yourself...

only the ending though

 

[devenger]

I thought the Kid saw the judge with a small girl on his lap, and like, a few minutes later, she's dead. I never got the impression it was anyone but the judge.

I've read people say the end must be sexual, and that due to the exclamation, it has to be worse than everything else, but what would that even be? Don't answer that, btw.

 

[CarpeDeezNutz]

Hmm interesting theory OP but I think either he was gruesomely killed and/or raped by the judge. Speaking of which what do ya'll make of the judge? Is he some sort of demon/deity?

Love Cormac McCarthy and his work, Blood Meridian is on my top ten fav books.

 

[lastflowers]

The Judge is based

Spoiler

incredibly loosely and only in that he is a person

on a real person.Wiki-Link

The Judge's philosophic belief and embodiment of everlasting war. His journey, meeting the Glanton Gang, aiding them, and then outlasting their defeat is a key piece in this. The Kid's demise at the end shows that Holden's philosophy is correct, his everlasting dance will never end.

I've read people say the end must be sexual, and that due to the exclamation, it has to be worse than everything else, but what would that even be? Don't answer that, btw.

I was never certain that his demise included some perverse sexuality either

 

[ElectricBlue187]

The judge is evil incarnate and at the end of the book he is victorious and ascendant. That's what I took from the ending.

 

[TTG]

I recall a scene earlier where the Judge, standing naked and armed with a small cannon, has two children with him as men burst in to kill him. Do I remember that right? If so, I would say that puts paid to the theory that the Kid was behind the other children's disappearance.

Right, there are plenty of other times where it's obviously implied/hinted at heavily. The first time we see the Judge with a kid especially. I don't think there's anything like a false narrator(obviously not the most accurate term) or some obfuscation in the chapters that follow the kid either. Didn't one of the others in their gang accuse the Judge of the same thing, putting a gun to his head?

I go with the first option OP.

EDIT: the dwarf prostitute was weird though, I agree there is some thing to that. I wrote it off as the author throwing in another perverse thing amongst a million others.

 

[Cyan]

Remember how the Judge wants to, essentially, take control of everything? He discusses it briefly at some point, when asked about why he's always investigating and taking notes. He wants to essentially learn everything about the world, to know everything, so that it exists or doesn't with his consent rather than without. It's his way of exerting power over the world at large.

My feeling is that he controls (or "knows") the Kid by raping him, and then murders him because there's no more use for him.

 

[TTG]

Remember how the Judge wants to, essentially, take control of everything? He discusses it briefly at some point, when asked about why he's always investigating and taking notes. He wants to essentially learn everything about the world, to know everything, so that it exists or doesn't with his consent rather than without. It's his way of exerting power over the world at large.

My feeling is that he controls (or "knows") the Kid by raping him, and then murders him because there's no more use for him.

That was my takeaway as well. Didn't he also systematically destroy everything after he recorded it in his journal? That would make the Kid's murder in line with that pattern.

 

[Zuhzuhzombie!!]

Yup. Rape and murder is my guess.


ed

false narrator

Unreliable narrator was the term I think you were looking for.

 

[Chipotle]

I thought it was rape and murder as well.

I really need to re-read the book though. Just reading this thread has given me chills.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

That was my takeaway as well. Didn't he also systematically destroy everything after he recorded it in his journal? That would make the Kid's murder in line with that pattern.

"The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation."

"Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."

The Judge was a seeker of knowledge so that he could understand and control what got destroyed and what was allowed to survive. It's pretty clear he does not pick the kid to be amongst that which survives. How he goes about carrying that out is left 'unspeakable.'

I thinly remember someone having a similar reaction to the descending comanche army. I could be misremembering, it's been years and I think I lent out my copy.

 

[TTG]

Unreliable narrator was the term I think you were looking for.

I was actually wondering if the term can be used for something not written in the first person, but yea, that correction works too.

 

[blainethemono]

I thinly remember someone having a similar reaction to the descending comanche army. I could be misremembering, it's been years and I think I lent out my copy.

The first of the herd began to swing past them in a pall of yellow dust, rangy slatribbed cattle with horns that grew agoggle and no two alike and small thin mules coalblack that shouldered one another and reared their malletshaped heads above the backs of the others and then more cattle and finally the first of the herders riding up the outer side and keeping the stock between themselves and the mounted company. Behind them came a herd of several hundred ponies. The sergeant looked for Candelario. He kept backing along the ranks but he could not find him. He nudged his horse through the column and moved up the far side. The lattermost of the drovers were now coming through the dust and the captain was gesturing and shouting. The ponies had begun to veer off from the herd and the drovers were beating their way toward this armed company met with on the plain. Already you could see through the dust on the ponies’ hides the painted chevrons and the hands and rising suns and birds and fish of every device like the shade of old work through sizing on a canvas and now too you could hear above the pounding of the unshod hooves the piping of the quena, flutes made from human bones, and some among the company had begun to saw back on their mounts and some to mill in confusion when up from the offside of those ponies there rose a fabled horde of mounted lancers and archers bearing shields bedight with bits of broken mirrorglass that cast a thousand unpieced suns against the eyes of their enemies. A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

Oh my god, said the sergeant.

I dunno if anyone could pull it off but I would love to see this book adapted into a miniseries

 

[Gentleman Jack]

I dunno if anyone could pull it off but I would love to see this book adapted into a miniseries

There it is. I always felt there was some parallelism between what made the sergeant, himself no stranger to the horrors of war say 'Oh my god' and what the men saw in the jakes that elicited a near identical reaction.

 

[Zuhzuhzombie!!]

The first of the herd began to swing past them in a pall of yellow dust, rangy slatribbed cattle with horns that grew agoggle and no two alike and small thin mules coalblack that shouldered one another and reared their malletshaped heads above the backs of the others and then more cattle and finally the first of the herders riding up the outer side and keeping the stock between themselves and the mounted company. Behind them came a herd of several hundred ponies. The sergeant looked for Candelario. He kept backing along the ranks but he could not find him. He nudged his horse through the column and moved up the far side. The lattermost of the drovers were now coming through the dust and the captain was gesturing and shouting. The ponies had begun to veer off from the herd and the drovers were beating their way toward this armed company met with on the plain. Already you could see through the dust on the ponies’ hides the painted chevrons and the hands and rising suns and birds and fish of every device like the shade of old work through sizing on a canvas and now too you could hear above the pounding of the unshod hooves the piping of the quena, flutes made from human bones, and some among the company had begun to saw back on their mounts and some to mill in confusion when up from the offside of those ponies there rose a fabled horde of mounted lancers and archers bearing shields bedight with bits of broken mirrorglass that cast a thousand unpieced suns against the eyes of their enemies. A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

Proper fucked, said the sergeant.

.

 

[xbhaskarx]

I am reading this book, therefore I am not reading this thread.

 

[devenger]

Recent interview with Tommy Lee Jones said he doesn't own the rights, as frequently rumored, but he has written a screenplay adaptation.

 

[Moloch321]

I think you've got to go with reading #1, that the Judge kills/rapes/torments the Kid. Given the terrible things that are directly represented in Outer Dark or Child of God, there's no evidence in McCarthy's canon that he'd shy away from a child abuse/torment seen if that's what he was going for.

 

[lastflowers]

I think you've got to go with reading #1, that the Judge kills/rapes/torments the Kid. Given the terrible things that are directly represented in Outer Dark or Child of God, there's no evidence in McCarthy's canon that he'd shy away from a child abuse/torment seen if that's what he was going for.

there are some scenes in outer dark that still haunt me. Rereading that book gives me the worst kind of chills. Lester was depraved, sure, but there was always something more comical about his little jaunt into depravity. Outer Dark just sticks your head in the door and slams it repeatedly.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Recent interview with Tommy Lee Jones said he doesn't own the rights, as frequently rumored, but he has written a screenplay adaptation.

I honestly don't know how this works as a movie, or what studio ever signs up to get it made.

It is pain and depravity and anguish enough to make Salo play like a fuckin Muppet movie.

 

[Goody]

Recent interview with Tommy Lee Jones said he doesn't own the rights, as frequently rumored, but he has written a screenplay adaptation.

Interesting. I never gave much credence to Jones owning the rights, since there have been rumblings about it for the last few years with none of them attached to Jones. I know he certainly respects the material, but I still think Blood Meridian is a very strictly a literary work.

McCarthy adaptations have certainly been popular the last few years. Too bad I'm hearing James Franco's Child of God isn't very good. It would be interesting to see studios try to get into his papers to get some of his scripts from the 80s. That or if a deal could be worked out with the composer of Billy Bob Thornton's All the Pretty Horses and the director's cut could be released. Oh, and PBS had that made-for-TV movie written by McCarthy.

You can tell I'm very excited about all of this.

 

[Showaddy]

I honestly don't know how this works as a movie, or what studio ever signs up to get it made.

It is pain and depravity and anguish enough to make Salo play like a fuckin Muppet movie.

That didn't stop The Road getting a feature length, though Meridian is far worse.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

That didn't stop The Road getting a feature length, though Meridian is far worse.

That's kinda what I'm driving at. The Road was bleak, but that's nothing compared to what happens in Blood Meridian.

 

[Goody]

That didn't stop The Road getting a feature length, though Meridian is far worse.

Violence is not high on my list of reason why Blood Meridian could not be made into a straight adaptation. It's structure wouldn't lend itself well to a feature and a lot of its big ideas really exist outside of a narrative.

 

[Jibbajabbawockky]

Yeah, I don't know how you'd do Blood Meridian justice on film. Beyond just the terribly bleak subject matter, so much of what makes that book what it is comes from Cormac McCarthy's way with words.

I think Ebert once said that The Proposition was as close as we would ever get to seeing Blood Meridian in movie form.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

Violence is not high on my list of reason why Blood Meridian could not be made into a straight adaptation. It's structure wouldn't lend itself well to a feature and a lot of its big ideas really exist outside of a narrative.

Part of what worked for me with No Country For Old Men was how much time they let the audience spend with the unmoving, unforgiving landscape of the American southwest in utter silence. This is an excellent stand-in for McCarthy's painstakingly researched descriptions of nature, but having done it once I doubt a film based on Blood Meridian would want to reuse the device and draw comparisons from critics as basic cribbing between directors.

Blood Meridian's sheer violence would have to get toned down for any adaptation, no way are they going to be allowed to show everything the Glanton gang does to indians and mexicans and remain in the range of current hard-R films.

I notice every critic except Ebert hated All The Pretty Horses. What says GAF?

 

[ElectricBlue187]

I notice every critic except Ebert hated All The Pretty Horses. What says GAF?

It has most of the content of the book but none of its soul

 

[blainethemono]

It definitely wouldnt work as a film. Structurally I think it might work as a ~10 episode miniseries

 

[BruceLeeRoy]

The judge is evil incarnate and at the end of the book he is victorious and ascendant. That's what I took from the ending.

Yeah this is what I always thought as well. I never attached any sexual perversion to the end either.

 

[Goody]

It has most of the content of the book but none of its soul

Word on the street says this would have been alleviated by the longer run time of the director's cut, allowing more room to breathe and a better score. Recently Thornton has said he's been trying to get the film out on video. There is apparently an issue of the original composer miffed about having his score cut when the movie was re-edited.

It's an OK movie otherwise.

 

[TTG]

I don't know how a movie version would go. The closest I can come up with is something like Apocalypse Now. You have to keep the ex priest's story of how the Judge joined the Glanton gang, that was the highlight of the book for me, but where to put it, right at the beginning? I can't see it working.

 

[adamsappel]

IBut I will just guess that it ended with the worst possible outcome for all characters involved in the story.

Welcome to the world of Cormac McCarthy.

I notice every critic except Ebert hated All The Pretty Horses. What says GAF?

I liked it; I'm hoping to see a director's cut one day.

 

[crozier]

Without reading this thread, I can tell you that the title alone is somewhat of a spoiler...

 

[Cyan]

Without reading this thread, I can tell you that the title alone is somewhat of a spoiler...

Don't worry, it isn't really. Knowing that events aren't entirely clear won't take away the impact, I promise you.

 

[Gozer the Gozerian]

Bumping this thread a couple months later, but I just finished reading this and man that ending is going to stick with me. For all the graphic and violent descriptions and passages throughout the book, those last few pages were even more unsettling.

Does anyone care to share their interpretation of the epilogue? I need to go back and re-read it, it kind of flew over my head but I'm also pretty tired after a long Christmas day so maybe that's why.

 

[CarpeDeezNutz]

He got raped?

 

[Gozer the Gozerian]

He got raped?

I'm not sure if this is in reply to my post or some of the other posts in the thread, I'm specifically thinking of the one page epilogue at the end.

 

[Stinkles]

Welcome to the world of Cormac McCarthy.



I liked it; I'm hoping to see a director's cut one day.

the Road has a relatively happy ending. If you don't think too hard about how fucked up Mexico or Florida would be.

 

[Draft]

I don't think there's enough compelling evidence that the Judge is The Kid. I do think the Judge is clearly supernatural. Whatever happens to The Kid may involve that supernatural nature. It might not be as normal as being buggered then killed.

Does anyone care to share their interpretation of the epilogue? I need to go back and re-read it, it kind of flew over my head but I'm also pretty tired after a long Christmas day so maybe that's why.

Building a fence brings and wiping out tribes of natives are both ways to civilize savage lands. I think the coda juxtaposes them in order to ask what is the difference between the two? Is peaceful fence building the natural progression of violent conquest? Is violent conquest necessary for the peaceful fence building? The United States is built on a graveyard of America's indiginous civilization. Instead of headstones we built roads and buildings. Was that bad, good, or just the indifferent way of the world?

I think it's the last one. People die in awful ways because of forces beyond their control and generations later a fence goes up on their grave because how else are the cattle going to be secured?